Chocolate
by DesiringMagic
Summary: Maybe the problem wasn't that I never liked chocolate, but that I loved it a bit too much.


**Author's Note: Quickie that has not been proofread so I apologize for any errors. This was also posted on tumblr.**

* * *

The first time she kissed me she had tasted like chocolate.

It caught me completely off guard. Why chocolate? Why would she taste like something so common, so bitter, when she was anything but?

Obviously, it had to do with the fact that she'd been drinking hot cocoa when it happened. Her full and soft lips tickling my thinner ones, pressing them harder when she saw that I wasn't pulling away. I couldn't have pulled away, not when she had finally given me the opportunity to discover what I'd been curious to know for so long. So I let her do as she pleased. I let her tongue sweep over mine while her hands found my graying hair, fingernails running tantalizingly down my scalp as my hands came to her small hips to hold her steadily against me. And I eagerly drank in the taste of chocolate...

Chocolate had never agreed with this me. It all tasted the same. Every type had the same bitter and unpleasant flavor. So maybe the surprise wasn't that she had tasted like chocolate… but that I liked it.

It was still bitter, but there was something else in the mix, something extra that made the chocolate sweeter and more pleasing to me. The problem was that soon after I found myself craving the disagreeable taste, needing it on my lips and in my mouth at every waking moment. But no matter what I tried and how much I ate, nothing satisfied me the way it had with the kiss. And it frustrated me, gnawed at the back of my head like a parasite. How could I have come to depend on something that I didn't like?

It was only when she kissed me again, some time later that I understood. She hadn't eaten chocolate of any kind but she still tasted like it. I could still perceive the familiar flavor as she explored my mouth once more, crawling onto my lap and tilting my head back ever so slightly to deepen our contact. It was since then that I knew, and still know, that _she_ tasted like chocolate.

* * *

The height of my newfound dependency on her was unsettling. The realization that it was more than a simple reliance terrified me. My feelings for her had traveled too deep, pushing and contorting themselves through every crack of my bones to settle at the base of my very being.

Self hatred consumed me for letting myself succumb so easily. I knew what would happen if I indulged in this little piece of heaven she was giving me because the same thing always happened, and I became determined to not let it happen with her. So I tried to distance myself, tried to wash away the tang that she left behind. But she always came back to leave it again, even with a simple brush of her fingers along my neck. I was always too powerless to stop her, for I ached for its comfort. Needed hers.

And soon, she became my bittersweet addiction. To her, the universe was outside those blue wooden doors. To me, my universe was the woman who tasted like chocolate.

* * *

She's on the floor in a matter of seconds.

I hear voices in my head shout urgently; telling me that there isn't much time.

_There's always time_, I say, even as it starts to run out on me. It always does. I try to stand while cradling her in my arms, but I'm so weak I can barely carry myself. My legs buckle under the added weight and I stumble onto the ground. She tries to convince me to go.

_Leave me_, she say. _There's nothing you can do_. Her attempts only encourage me to hang onto her even tighter. Can't she understand that I need my universe to live? That without it, without her, I'll start to fall? Gravity will take me; push me down at five centimeters per second to suffer slowly, agonizingly. (Or maybe gravity will be a kinder mistress and plunge me at one hundred miles per second so that the torture is painful but quick. I doubt it.) Of course, she protests. She doesn't understand. For her, the universe is still shinning and moving faster than the speed of light, while mine lies deteriorating in my arms.

In the end I manage to make it to the Tardis with her but by the time I've set a course and taken her to the Tardis' medical bay, it's too late.

Time has run out.

I watch as the stars begin to die out in her eyes, the crescent moons crumbling from her smile, the galaxies spiraling out of her milky skin. It's all going out, but I hold hope that the taste of chocolate is still there; and when I bring my lips to hers… it is.

The bitterness washes over me, hitting me like a sudden hurricane on the unsuspecting shores of a beach, and it finally prompts tears out of my eyes and fury into my soul, for this time the taste isn't even a little bit sweet. It's bitter.

Just plain _bitter_.

I never did like chocolate.


End file.
